Cort Mosley
Cort Mosley was a mercenary and a founding member of The Wily Bastards, a mercenary outfit on the Corpse Coast of some note. Born and raised in central Louisiana, Cort was originally a wastelander before being kidnapped by a sadistic and psychotic raider king and imprisoned in his own personal dungeon with several other wastelanders. Eventually freed by a group of wandering vigilantes, Cort spent time as a militiamen in Baton Rouge and forged a successful career there before he became a mercenary on the Corpse Coast. He retired from the mercenary life after the fall of the Wily Bastards and attempted to live out the rest of his life in peace. However, his past demons caught up to him and he committed suicide in 2289. History Early Life Cort Mosley was born to Jack Kennedy Mosley and Jeanie Mae Mosely, two small subsistence farmers eeking a living in central Louisiana. Cort was the eldest child, and was followed by a younger sister named Sarah. Most of Cort's childhood was spent helping his parents with chores around the farm, such as planting and harvesting the mutated corn they grew when the season was right, or idly exploring the nearby area that the Mosley's called home. With almost no immediate neighbors, Cort was a lonely child for the most part with only his younger sister and parents as company. The one pet they had, a dog named Rusty, had to be killed during a drought in order to feed the family. Aside from the usual hardships of growing up in the wasteland such as occasionally not having enough to eat or having to chase away some Molerats that were attempting to dig up their family plot, Cort had a mostly boring and uneventful life. His days were consisted of very similar routines. In order to keep himself entertained he often escaped into imaginary worlds that he would "play in" for hours. His parents were not concerned with this behavior at all, believing that he would grow out of the stage. When Cort was seventeen, his younger sister fell ill with dysentery and died due to complications from it. Cort and his parents could do little as they lacked medicine or the medical knowledge to deal with it effectively, but, the death still shook the small family. Cort's fathers sanity was damaged due to his daughters death, which lead him to leave the family a year later. Cort and his mother remained at the small homestead, with Cort preforming most of the work around the house. Eventually, the workload to maintain the small farm, a task once performed by four people, became too much for the mother-son pair and they moved to the nearby city of Baton Rouge in an attempt to create a better life for themselves. Forced Imprisonment Following Cort and his mother's move to Baton Rouge, they found that they city provided just a few options (if not fewer) options then their homestead. Cort became a small-time scavenger, and occasionally petty criminal, while his mother worked in the state-sponsored farms in the city while the two attempted to make ends meet. Although life was hard and Cort nearly was beaten to death several times by the Baton Rouge militia after catching him stealing food the two managed to eek out a living for themselves. However, it came to a head one day when Cort was scavenging on the outskirts of the city for supplies he could bring back to sell. Not keeping track of where he was headed, he kept pushing further and further to the city limits until he was no longer in Baton Rouge proper. Lost and completely unsure of where he was, he further disorientated himself in his attempts to get back to the city. Night was falling quickly and he decided to camp out and reattempt his journey in the morning. Cort woke up in the middle of the night was a raider pressing a knife to his neck and another going through his bags. They tied him up and hauled them to a remote school building that served as their base. Lead inside, Cort found a group of twenty-nine other wastelanders ranging from caravan guards to farmers to scavengers such as himself and all others in between. As they sat huddled in the school's old cafeteria a well-dressed man with combed over hair entered the room with a large raider entourage and addressed the group. Introducing himself as Commandant Jones and that they were located at the 'Jones Institute for Psychology and Sociology', he explained that the group had been randomly selected to be apart of a "study intending to expose the effects of long-term confinement, coupled with randomized exercises they will be expected to complete, on a sample population of wastelanders." Commandant Jones continued to explain that they will not be able to leave until the study was completed, and in addition that an attempts to escape will be a "punishable offense." They were then given a crude jumpsuit, with numbers ranging from one to thirty stitched on the back. They were then ushered into the old gymnasiums locker room (with everything but the old wooden benches inside of the room having been already removed) and told to wait until further instruction. Cort was number fifteen. Unbeknownst to Cort and the rest of the wastelanders at the time, Commandant Jones was an unhinged sadist and a self-educated man in the ways of psychology; a very dangerous combination. He earned a fortune in the slave-trading business where he learned all about how to capture and retain other human beings, but, he was unable to act out his true desires on his captives due to having to sell them later on. As such he quit the slaving business and hired out a raider gang. Taking over an old school and refitting it as his personal prison, he sent them out to capture as many random wastelanders as he could for his "grand experiment". In it he intended to psychological and physically break as many people as he could, in whatever creative ways his sick and twisted mind could think of, in an effort to sate his desires. What followed was four years of hell for Cort and the other wastelanders imprisoned there. Commandant Jones was quite effective in breaking down the spirit and bodies of the "study participants". Physical pain such as having the raider guards beat them with wooden batons on a regular basis, mutilation of faces, removal of limbs, the forced removal of teeth, and in some cases gouging out peoples eyes were common. A common group punishment was to hang people from the ceiling, with their hands tied behind their backs, with the eventual weight of their body causing their shoulders to snap out of place. In addition to physically torturing those confined in his prison, Commandant Jones employed various psychological techniques against Corts and the wastelanders. They were forbidden to bathe, leaving many caked in a layer of filth and their own feces during their imprisonment. Those that did bathe or attempted to bathe were beaten to death by the other prisoners. Food and water was withheld for weeks at a time, causing several to die and forcing the others (Cort included) to cannibalize the dead in order to survive. Commandant Jones also had them occasionally locked in individual coffin-like wooden boxes, with no room to move inside, in order to induce claustrophobia. Cort remained in Commandant Jones prison for nearly a year in a half. Most of the "studies" population died within the first year, with only Cort and a handful of other stubborn survivors clinging onto life. The only reason the study ended was when a handful of wandering vigilantes stormed into the school and liberated the prisoners by killing the raider gang and Commandant Jones in a shootout. They found Cort and two other survivors, Numbers 29 and 7, and the remains of twenty-seven other bodies inside of the gymnasium locker room. The three survivors lied to the vigilantes, saying that they had been killed by Commandant Jones and his men rather than telling them the truth that they had to cannibalize them in order to survive. The three survivors explained the long and harrowing story to the vigilantes, before they were taken to the nearest friendly city of The Big Easy. Return to Baton Rouge Shortly after his release, Cort elected to return to Baton Rouge to find his mother. He parted ways with the rest of the survivors without saying goodbye, unwilling and unwanting to associate himself any further with the horrors he experienced. Hitching a ride with a caravan, he returned to him and his mother's shack a shell of the man he once was. For weeks he was unable to leave the shack, merely silently pacing about. He would eat the food his mother brought him sitting on the floor with his fingers, shoveling it in his mouth quickly similar to how he ate in confinement. He would often wake up in the middle of the night screaming, reliving one or the other traumatic experiences he suffered through. However, due to his mother's patient care, Cort slowly but surely began to recover from the ordeal. In several months he eventually left the shack, for the first time, a partially recovered man. Although he had physically recovered from the incident, which had left him severely underweight and weakened, his mind could not truly recover from the trauma. Cort signed onto the Baton Rouge militia, receiving weapons training and other skills necessary to make him a soldier. The severe discipline of the militia was initially tough on Cort but as time progressed he adapted and ended up thriving in the militia. The military discipline did his broken mind some measure of good and Cort became known as a decent shot and leader and men. Cort's commanders did take careful note of his violence during practice sessions and the utter lack of fear he had in the face of danger compared to other recruits. Cort was marked during the ending phases of his basic training to be placed with an elite squad of the militia known as Haddock's Heroes. Cort accepted the offer and was soon placed in the squad. Haddock's Hero Cort joined the twenty man unit just prior to the unit leaving for an operation against General Haddock's most hated rival, The Royaume. The mission was to destroy a nearby Gendarmerie scouting camp before they could collect any meaningful information about Baton Rouge and the militia that protects it. Spending several days tracking the scouts, Haddock's Heroes managed to catch up with them just as they were settling down for the night. Quickly the unit ambushed the scouts and killed all in one fell swoop. A search of the scouts possessions revealed documents that The Royaume was gathering a mercenary force to conduct raids against Baton Rouge and General Haddock's government. With no time to go back to Baton Rouge to assemble a fighting force, the unit took off towards the location of the mercenary encampment. They set up an observation post near the camp and began to decipher the strength of the mercenary company. From their reconnaissance, they discovered that the mercenary company had enough strength to at least severely weaken the Baton Rouge militia, if not completely destroy it. In a late night discussion the unit decided that they would launch a midnight raid into the camp to destroy as many essential supplies of the mercenaries as they could, slitting the throats of those that they came across. Cort, his face smeared with dirt and twigs to function as camouflage, was apart of the team in charge of sneaking into the tents of the sleeping mercenaries. Cort move from tent to tent as the raid progressed, plunging his knife deep into the sleeping mercenaries one by one as those in the tent were completely unaware until it was their turn. For Cort, it was almost relieving to be the one spreading the terror instead of being at the brunt end of it. After killing, by his own estimate, at least ten mercenaries in their bed he heard an owl's call; the sign that it was time to meet up at the rendezvous point. Cort slunk away into the night as explosions rocked the camp; destroying the weapon and ammo storage dump as well as the food supply tent. Haddock's Heroes disappeared into the night to their observation point where they watched the mercenary company pack up and leave several days later before returning back to Baton Rouge. Missions like this became typical over Cort's multiyear career with Haddock's Heroes and the Baton Rouge militia. He established a reputation as a coldblooded man of action whom lead by example rather than by flowing words or speeches. Although Cort will neither confirm nor deny, some say that he was involved with the capture and torture of dissidents against General Haddock's junta, becoming one of the more feared enforcers for the General. However, life as a military soldier soon wore down Cort, who began yearning for something less structured. Once his mother passed away in her sleep, there was nothing tying Cort to Baton Rouge anymore. Putting in his resignation Cort headed to the Corpse Coast in 2259 at the age of 25. The Corpse Coast Hiring himself out as a caravan guard, Cort reached the Corpse Coast Personality Cort was known for his arrogance, bursts of anger, and general lack of respect for those around him. He was quick to assume that if he wanted something done right, do it yourself and make damn sure that everybody knew it. Often Cort's external problems were solved by shooting, stabbing or strangling something or someone until it wasn't a problem anymore and his internal problems were dealt with repression, multiple substances abuse as well as brutalizing those he encountered as enemies. Cort became the de-facto leader of the Wily Bastards not due to any sort of charisma but due to bullying those around him and his happen-stance greater understanding of battlefield tactics which enabled him to keep his fellow mercenaries alive.Those outside of the Wily Bastards, as well as those inside of the outfit, were quick to label him as an "asshole", a "prick" and a "classic Section 8". Cort seemed to relish this reputation and often sought to enhance it by taking trophies from enemies he'd killed. However, Cort's entire personality was merely the facade of a deeply troubled and broken man. He feared that if he showed anything short of utter ruthlessness or anger then he may be preyed upon like he was by Commandant Jones. Occasionally Cort's true nature would surface if only for a brief moment. In these moments Cort showed the type of person he could had been, a goofy joker with a bright smile and a desire to give whom deeply cared about those around him. Although these moments rarely lasted and he quickly resumed being the Cort most knew, it was often enough to make those around him wonder what could had been. Quotes By About Category:Mercenaries Category:Deceased